Dr. Elaine S. Oran, Senior Scientist
for Reactive
Flow Physics at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL),
has
received the Dryden Lectureship in Research Award. The award
is
presented by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
(AIAA). Dr. Oran presented the lecture, titled "Matchsticks,
Scramjets, and Black Holes: Numerical Simulation Faces Reality"
on January 14, 2002, at the 40th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting
and Exhibit in Reno, Nevada.

The Dryden Lectureship in Research
was named in
honor of Dr. Hugh L. Dryden in 1967. The lecture
emphasizes the
great importance of basic research to the advancement
of
aeronautics and astronautics and is a salute to research scientists
and engineers. NRL's Dr. Herbert Friedman, the late Chief Scientist
Emeritus for NRL's E.O. Hulburt Center for Space Research, presented
the Dryden Lecture in 1973.

Dr. Oran is known for her pioneering
applications
of numerical simulation for solving problems in
fluid dynamics
and reacting flows. She has made pivotal contributions
to a
broad range of problems in combustion and propulsion, atmospheric
physics, and solar physics and astrophysics. Her work has
contributed
to both basic science and to advanced engineering
applications.
She has over 300 publications to her credit, and
these have been
published in a wide range of scientific
journals, proceedings,
and magazines. With Dr. Jay P. Boris,
she has coauthored the
book Numerical Simulation of Reactive
Flow, whose second edition
was published by Cambridge
University Press in 2001. Her current
areas of research include
microfluids (the dynamics of flows
in micro- and nanodevices),
the physics of deflagrations and
detonations, and the physics
of astrophysical supernovae.

Dr. Oran is a Fellow of the AIAA,
a previous AIAA
Vice President for Publications and a member
of the AIAA Board
of Directors. She is also a Fellow of the American
Physical
Society and one of the founders and previous chairs
of the
Society's Division of Computational Physics. She is on
the
Board of Directors of the Combustion Institute, and is Vice
President of the Institute of the Dynamics of Energetic and Reactive
Systems. She is currently a Managing Editor of the journal Shock
Waves and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Computational
Physics.

In
1979, Dr. Oran received the
Arthur S. Fleming Award and in 1988
the WISE Award in Science,
given for achievement in science by
Women in Science and Engineering.
In 1999, she received the
Oppenheim Prize for "outstanding
contributions to the theory
of the dynamics of explosions and
reactive systems." And
in 2000, she received the Ya. B.
Zeldovich Gold Medal, prepared
by the Russian Academy of Sciences
for the Combustion
Institute, and given for "outstanding
contributions to the
theory of combustion and detonations."
In 2001 she became
an Honorary Professor of the University of
Wales.

Dr. Oran received her A.B. degree
in physics and chemistry from Bryn Mawr College in 1966. She
earned her M.Ph. degree in physics in 1968 and her Ph.D. degree
in engineering and applied science in 1972, both from Yale
University.
She has been at NRL since 1972.

The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory is the Navy's full-spectrum corporate laboratory, conducting a broadly based multidisciplinary program of scientific research and advanced technological development. The Laboratory, with a total complement of approximately 2,500 personnel, is located in southwest Washington, D.C., with other major sites at the Stennis Space Center, Miss., and Monterey, Calif. NRL has served the Navy and the nation for over 90 years and continues to meet the complex technological challenges of today's world. For more information, visit the NRL homepage or join the conversation on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

Comment policy: We hope to receive submissions from all viewpoints, but we ask that all participants agree to the Department of Defense Social Media User Agreement. All comments are reviewed before being posted.